Yeah, she's a kind of friend indeed
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
1954 : I've Got A Woman - Ray Charles
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Not a song I know - shame on me! I listened to his best-of as part of one of my reviews, but it didn't feature on that - although I suspect I wouldn't have remembered it anyway.
2:51 - another short and sweet effort (I think they couldn't fit much more on a 45 back in the day). It's not really my cup of tea, but it feels more like proper music than we've had so far - you can hear the roots of quite a few genres over the years in here and it feels "cool".
WIkipedia (if you ever need to get lost in a Wikipedia entry, then have a look at Ray's entry - it's mad!) tells us that the song has also been known as "I Got A Woman" and "I Gotta Woman" at various times and was one of the prototypes for what became known as "soul music" - now there's a phrase you don't hear very often these days. It also tells us it's mentioned in Dire Straits' "Walk Of Life" ("Here comes Johnny singing I Got A Woman") - I always wondered what that was on about and now I know!
Wikipedia also tells us that it has been covered by both Elvis and The Beatles - which is very fine company he's keeping there, although I'm struggling to imagine what The Beatles' version sounds like and have ABSOLUTELY no intention of finding out. Some further research tells us it's also been covered by Sammy Davis Jr, The Everly Brothers, Julie London, The Monkees and Michael Bolton - that's quite some eclectic company he's keeping there. No Daniel O'Donnell or Anton du Beke though (thankfully). And finally Wikipedia tells us probably why this track has the top spot for this year - Kanye West sampled it, not extensively but most definitely repeatedly on "Gold Digger". Kanye is many things, but subtle he is not.
Intriguingly, as far as I can tell, it never charted in the UK - other more successful charting tracks from this year are Eddie Calvert's "Oh Mein Papa" and David Whitfield's "Cara Mia" which spent 9 and 10 weeks at #1 respectively, but I can't imagine too many people remember either of these with much fondness (or at all). Songs I do recognise from this year are Frank Sinatra's "Three Coins In The Fountain" and Rosemary Clooney's (George's aunt) "This Old House" (but OBVIOUSLY I only know Shakey's version). Also of interest from the top spot this year is Winifred Atwell's "Let's Have Another Party" which was the first UK #1 by a black person and she's (according to Wikipedia) still the only black female instrumentalist to do so (I'm guessing "instrumentalist" is very open to interpretation here).
Nothing else is jumping out at me from the year, so I'm happy for Ray to have the year although I would have preferred him to have it for his contribution to music ("soul" or otherwise) rather than because Kanye nicked (sorry, was influenced by) it. I'm suspecting there will be other tracks that I prefer more, but it's been an interesting history lesson.
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